European Politician wants a More Open Internet; Leaders to Vote on Killing Roaming Charges

When we travel outside of our country, we typically have to worry about roaming charges, or get a SIM from a local carrier which is sometimes cheaper. Now here in the US, both AT&T and T-Mobile have worked to get rid of roaming charges. While AT&T will let you use LTE in other countries, T-Mobile's deal is just EDGE unfortunately. But it's still a lot cheaper than the roaming charges we used to see. But for our friends in Europe, it looks like those roaming charges are about to become illegal.

European Politician Neelie Kroes, has been fighting for an open internet for quite a while, and it looks like she's about to get what she wants. She's been wanting to get a ban on roaming charges, and it looks like that's about to happen. The European Parliament approved it from a vote, so it just needs to pass through one more level of legislature for it to be a done deal. From what's being reported, European travelers wouldn't have to worry about roaming charges as soon as Christmas 2015. Which is a pretty big deal, because some of these roaming, or international data plans are around $100 for a few megabytes. Yes that's megabytes not gigabytes. So it can easily empty your wallet, but banning roaming charges is a pretty big deal, and I hope the rest of the world will follow suit as well.

Not to mention that the principle of net neutrality would also be protected by this law. Making it illegal for European internet provides to block or ban specific web traffic based on who's sending or receiving it. For now, there's not much else to say on this topic, but we will be keeping an eye on it as it is a pretty interesting one. How do all of our European readers think about this? Let us know in the comments below.

Alex has written for Androidheadlines since 2012 as Editor of the site and traveled the World to many of the biggest Smartphone and Technology events. Alex has a background in Technology and IT and Deep Passion for Everything Android and Google. His specialties lay in Smartphones of all budgets, Accessories, Home Automation and more. Contact him at [email protected]